This invention has relation to a means for checking the continuity of spliced pairs of telephone lines without the necessity of destroying the splices and resplicing the lines after the testing has been accomplished.
A preliminary search was conducted on the invention, and was reported on Sept. 28, 1977. The references located are not believed to be particularly pertinent to the invention. The reference patents cited on this search are:
U.S. Pat. No. 2,020,402, granted to Edwards, et al. in November of 1935; PA0 U.S. Pat. No. 2,445,667, granted to Fuglie in July of 1948; PA0 U.S. Pat. No. 2,476,115, granted to Runbaken in July of 1949; PA0 U.S. Pat. No. 2,479,186, granted to Simkins in August of 1949; and PA0 U.S. Pat. No. 2,639,318, granted to Des Roches in May of 1973.
The applicant and those in privy with him know of no prior art which anticipates the invention herein.
The present method for checking the continuity in a pair of telephone lines leading to a specific home telephone installation for example, where the service has been interrupted, is to proceed to a junction box full of spliced pairs halfway between the malfunctioning telephone and the central telephone office, locate the particular pair of lines extending to that telephone by means of the color coding on the lines, clip off the splice immediately adjacent the insulating plastic body, and apply the test instrument to the clipped off lines. If a dial tone back to the central station is heard, then the lineman knows that the trouble is from his test point out toward the telephone. He will then go to a junction box halfway between the one he has just tested and the telephone and will repeat the procedure. First, however, he must reapply a splice to the free ends of each of the lines of the tested pair at his original test site. This shortens up the available wire in that line at that junction point, and if several tests must be made with the same pair, eventually the lines will not be long enough to be spliced, and extra wire must be spliced in, adding to the confusion and tangle of spliced pairs at the junction box.
Since two new splices must be made on each of the pairs of lines each time a test is made, the cost of the splices including the insulating splice bodies and metallic splice bars is considerable.
To alleviate the problems existing, the structure of the present invention were developed.